"we are each other’s harvest / we are each other’s business" Gwendolyn Brooks

What can poems do? They can say. They can remember. They can name. (Read Gwendolyn Brooks’ poem “Paul Robeson”).

I wrote the below poem this morning, because it is upsetting to see someone in need, and feel like there is nothing you can do, nothing you can give them to ease where they are. This person’s mental agitation was high, and they did not want food, and did not know where they wanted to go (which I did not expect/anticipate, and I should have allowed for this possibility—but so often folks want a ride to the bus station, which is such a gentle ask). Sometimes all you can give another human is water, and it doesn’t feel great. To be someone with mental health needs, and medication and therapy, and to see someone who needs exactly the same—it sucks. In the very least, give water. In the very least, listen.

Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedSouth Gregson StreetThe woman by the side of the roadwants to go where the others are goingand points to the stream of cars.She thinks my car is too nice, sitson a bundle of clothes. Her nameis Chris, and she is warm fromthe spring day. I have a cold water for her.Have you wanted to help and been no help at all? I let her out on Universitywhen she begins to panic, leavingthe ground she knows. I just cameback from upstairs, she saysI don’t want to go back upstairs,mishearing me when I sayI can drive her back up Kent Street.She says: don’t call the cops on me. She says: I want to go where the others are going, we are losing them, they are getting lost.